It wasn't always David Coles' intent to heat his Shelton home with wood. When the house was being built in the early 1970s, electric baseboard heating was installed. But, by the late 1970s, the price of electricity had gone up and Coles decided there were other, cheaper ways to get warm.

Like burning wood. Coles has heated his home with an indoor wood-burning stove for roughly 30 years. He cuts and splits the wood, most of which he gets from friends. He said several of his neighbors heat with wood, and it just seems to make sense to him. Even with the cost of a chainsaw -- to cut the wood -- and occasional repairs to his stove, he only spends about $500 to $600 a year to heat his home.

"It's just cheaper to heat that way, I think," Coles said.

Coles isn't the only one in the region burning wood to get warm. David Thornton, of Fairfield, has been heating with an indoor wood stove for roughly 40 years. Semi-retired from the tree removal business, Thornton said he originally chose wood-based heating because the fuel was readily available to him. "It was free heat, basically," he said. "And now I'm just wed to it."

Though Thornton, Coles and others stand by their wood, the smoke generated by wood-burning devices has many people hot under the collar. Those include Caesar Munoz, of Bridgeport, who said he frequently smells smoke from someone in his neighborhood burning wood. He's not sure who the culprit is, or whether the wood is being fired up in an indoor stove, an outdoor wood burning furnace, or some other device. But Munoz does know one thing.

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Though he hasn't smelled the offender's stench yet this winter, he has multiple times in the past. The smoke irritates his throat, Munoz said and, beyond that, "it's just really annoying."

With the economy still grim, there has been a bump in people turning to wood to heat their homes, said Jerry Farrell, Jr. state commissioner of consumer protection. "Any time we go through an economic downturn, those are times when people do turn toward wood," he said. "It remains a very popular product."

Seasoned firewood in Connecticut is selling for about $220 a cord, but varies, depending factors such as the type of wood. A cord is a stack of wood measuring 4 feet high by 4 feet wide by 8 feet long. Farrell said, anecdotally, he's heard the price of wood is up this year due to increased demand, but didn't have hard figures. "We can say it's going up," he said. "Is it going wildly up? No."

At any rate, climbing prices aren't the only downside to heating with wood, as there are concerns that wood smoke emitted from some heating devices can be, at best, a nuisance and, at worst, dangerous. Of particular concern of late are outdoor wood burning furnaces, which many in the state -- including Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal -- see as serious health risk and generators of air pollution. Earlier this month, Blumenthal called on the state's General Assembly to ban the furnaces, which are essentially wood-fired boilers in a small, insulated shed with a smoke stack.

The furnaces heat water that is carried through underground pipes to heat a home or building. Blumenthal, along with representatives of the American Lung Association and the state-based nonprofit Environment and Human Health, Inc., assert that the thick smoke generated from these devices contain unhealthy amounts of various toxins, including particulate matter. These small airborne particles can become lodged in the lungs, making breathing difficult. Inhaling these particles can also lead to serious health problems for certain populations, including those with asthma, respiratory or heart conditions or other illnesses.

Three Connecticut towns -- Granby, Hebron and Tolland -- have already banned the outdoor furnaces, as has the state of Washington.

The problem with the furnaces lie in their basic design, said Robert Girard, assistant director of air enforcement for the state Department of Environmental Protection. The device consists of a "firebox" that holds the wood, surrounded by a jacket that contains the water. As the wood burns, it heats the water, which, in turn, heats the home. But this design produces a slower burning, cooler fire, which can create more smoke.

"The smoke really does permeate the whole neighborhood," said Nancy Alderman, president of Environment and Human Health. Alderman said her organization has received multiple complaints from families being made sick from wood smoke coming into their homes. Many of the complainants have suffered ailments from bronchitis, sinusitis and pneumonia due to the wood smoke, Alderman said, and end up seeking medical help.

Wood-burning stoves are less of a concern to environment and health advocates than the furnaces, though the stoves also, obviously, produce wood smoke. Girard said the wood stoves generally heat up faster than the outdoor furnaces, and, as result, produce less smoke. Newer stoves are especially efficient, as wood-burning stoves manufactured and sold after July 1992 are required to be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency.

EPA-certified wood stoves have been tested to meet stringent emissions requirements, and have been designed to burn more cleanly.

Even older stoves are not usually a problem, Alderman said, as long as the smoke isn't drifting into neighboring properties. If the chimney attached to a stove is high enough to allow for proper distribution of the smoke, and the homes in the neighborhood aren't too close together, complaints are typically minimal.

Fairfield Health Director Sands Cleary said he receives some complaints about wood smoke, and typically asks the offenders to cease and desist. People are usually cooperative, he said. "Most people, when they see it's blowing into a neighbor's house, they get it."

Neither Coles nor Thornton has received any complaints on their devices, though Thornton said he'd understand if the smoke bothered people. "Occasionally, it does look like Chernobyl, especially when you first start the fire," he said. "But, for the most part, it smells pretty good."